Yesterday was a day of many firsts and a day to be remembered as we celebrated and revelled in our somewhat small accomplishments of the day. Like most days here on this tropical paradise Espiritu Santo has no regard of time, each day just evolves and we roll with what ever it is that we need to do.
Our only set plan was to meet with our old friend Torquil the guy who sold us the property at a place called the the waterside bar. We had no idea where it was but it’s a small island and we knew that the place was in town.
Talking with Marie from the Hibiscus attraction Centre gave way to a discussion about plants and types of tropical fruits. Elena asked where we could buy some plants and we discovered that the Agricultural College has a nursery attached to it where you can buy plants at a very reasonable price.There is a local fruit that we have just fallen in love with. We first tried it when we were in Port Vila, our friends there introduced it to us. The Pamplemousse is a cross between a lemonade and a grapefruit and the fruit can grow up to the size of a large baseball. For the small cost of $5 per tree we have started our plantation.
Carrying the tree along our neighbours driveway proved to be a task as much as I wanted to carry the tree all the way in one go, there where many pit stops. Elena and her Mom marched on ahead. There were voices that I didn’t recognise.
Brownie is the neighbours gardener and we had hoped to meet with him at some stage during our visit. He’s the most interesting and friendly character. He’s more than happy to help us and over a shared bottle of water around the fire we chatted for a couple of hours. I learned that Brownies father is the custom owner of the land we have bought, when i say bought I mean leased as a foreigner cannot buy land – our lease is for 65 years.
We walked back up to the gate and fetched the car as Brownie had a key for the gate, this was another first, the first time I had driven down the neighbours driveway to our beach.
The tide was in and it was the first time we’ve been on the property with the tide so high. Today its was time for swimming. I really wanted to check out the reef the was about 50m off the shore.
